Playgroup, Gumdrops, and Dinos
A few times lately Colwyn has asked to play with gumdrops and cups of water. At first, I had no idea what he was talking about. But I eventually figured it out.. he wanted to play with eyedroppers and cups of water. He likes it when I tint the water so he can experiment with dropping red water into clear water and so on. It's also great for his fine motor skills. And he likes making art with it, too.. he drips colored water onto white paper, and it dries quite nicely, actually.
He also got a new states puzzle and a globe. The states puzzle is a bit advanced for him, but he likes point out which states have planes or buffalos or whatever. And the globe, while small, will be great for pointing out places we read about.
We had a Heritage themed playgroup for our Pre-Homeschooling Co-op today. We all brought food that is symbolic of our heritage, and the kids played while the moms ate. ;) Well, the kids ate some, too. Colwyn and Lachlann seemed a bit more at ease this time, since they've met the other kids twice now. We're hoping to have Dani's kids, Thomas and Aidan, over next week. Hopefully that'll give Colwyn the chance to get to know Thomas a bit better. He always seems to do much better one-on-one than in large groups.
I think the Co-op will be really nice once it gets going. We'll be able to set up "classes" for the kids where if one mom is really good at math, she'll do a math project with all the kids one week, and next week, another mom who is great at science will do a science project with all the kids. That way the boys will get experience working in a group and taking direction from another adult. We're also planning on signing Lachlann up for swimming lessons (I think at the Lydon Aquatic Center) in the spring, and Colwyn will probably take a sports class at the Y where he'll learn about a few different sports.
Tomorrow we're going to our regular playgroup at Imajine That in Lawrence. We've never been, but I hear it's really good. Colwyn's looking forward to seeing his friends, and I'm looking foward to getting out of the house again. I know it won't be long before the kids are sick again, and I want to take advantage of their health while I can.
Labels: art, play, social studies, socialization
posted by Rachel @ 2:24 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
what a good idea for fine motor skills. This is a big concern for us b/c marcus has very little fine motor coordination. We have been doing a few things such as punching holes in paper plates w/ a hole puncher then stringing yarn through it to make faces (or anything), beading up the wazoo and cutting endlessly shapes out of paper.
Since Marcus just attends preschool to see the speech therapist, gym, music and go to recess (he is only there for 2 hours I don't see how they get much done if he goes to ST for 30 mins and recess for 30 mins). I usually spend 2 hours on school days and 2.5 on non-school days doing our homeschool work.
I tend to lean towards child-directed units and providing a literacy rich environment. We just finished up a few weeks of activities geared on the body, bones and animal bodies. It was really fun. Then everyone got sick :( so since we are getting ready for chinese new year we are talking about china, asia, asian food, buddhism etc.. This weekend we made a list of the asian vegetables we could think of. The kids wrote a list, made pictures and then had to find them at the asian market. We have been learning new chinese words each day, reading books about dragons, singing songs and trying to incorporate chinese new year into the lessons.
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